Category Archives: Stinking Thinking

Acceptance, DA Literature, Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Grief, Higher Power, Spirituality, Step 04, The 12 Steps

TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

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“To  thine own self be true.”  is an old axiom that has much merit for those of us who work the spiritual  program of the Twelve Steps.    Often in therapy I ask people to list as many strengths as they can, and for some this is a difficult task when they are depressed and the world appears to be a grey and fearsome dark place.  But this is a n inventory that we must make– we must begin to look at  our strengths and stop wallowing in the self-pity which denies the new directions and progress occurring in our lives through the life of our depression, namely that we can’t seem to see the gracious goodness in ourselves that has been placed there for all time by the Higher Power. This in itself is the attitude that keeps alive our depression, sadness and self-deprecating attitudes.  We need to look at our assets and list our strengths as we gather together time after time in our Depressed Anonymous group or our individual working ( HOME STUDY PROGRAM)  of the Twelve Step program  in our lives.  We  need to remove as quickly as possible all the old excuses and reasons that we cling to which  keep us depressed and out of healthful recovery. Let’s be objective about ourselves and admit that just as we possibly have caused ourselves to be depressed, we likewise can un-depress ourselves in the same way.”

SOURCE: DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS, (3rd Edition, 2011).. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, Ky 40217. (p. 56)

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Only when I had taken a complete inventory of my own life (Step Four) did I realize that certain ways of personal  thinking, feeling and behaviors gradually spiraled me physically into the painful pit of my own personally  manufactured  melancholia. (Some depression experiences can also be the result of physical illness/diseases. That is why it is best to talk to a medical professional before we diagnose ourselves. )  Now here is the part that people can’t quite understand –that we caused ourselves to be depressed. How could that be? Why would I want to cause myself so much pain? Good question. The real issue here is that I discovered over time that because of emotional issues that were mine, mostly unpleasant to reflect upon, such as guilt, shame producing isolation from family, friends and the world, plus the grief over lost employment and relationships. And then, because of this continued mental and emotional beating myself up it all came crashing down  as no longer could I think of anything but disaster, grief  and gloom. I became paralyzed emotionally, physically and spiritually and mentally. My body responded by not responding so that in time it was a battle just to get out of bed. So, there you have it. I caused all this by the way I thought about myself. In Step Four I was able to take each issue by itself and then to see how I might restore myself before my experience with depression. I learned how to un-depress myself. Remember, most of the things that come “out of the blue” are  the rain, snow and lightening. And now that I know where my melancholia originated and why, I am un-depressed today.

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Anger, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Focus

I CAN ONLY CHANGE MYSELF

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  Higher Thoughts for Down Days(c) (February 27)

AFFIRMATION

I am gaining, day by day, a new and hopeful attitude about my life and my relationship with others.

“Strangely, I feel as if I have been incredibly lucky. Logically, I don’t believe in luck. I believe that people make their own lives what they are, but still I feel so lucky to have been involved in a group which gave me  the opportunity, and incentive, to start to make changes in my life.  To understand why I am sometimes so angry, (See DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS WORKBOOK / Anger workshop. Checklist for Hidden Anger) why I have been so self-critical and self-destructing.  Understanding why you feel as you do open the gates for the even harder struggle of changing what you do.” (7)

REFLECTION

Making changes is part of making a life.  If I choose to stay mired in the deep pit of depression, I can choose that.  I have this as an option.  But, if I want to choose  and risk changing myself, I have the option of working to construct a different way of looking at my world.  Just by changing my attitude about my life and the direction where I want it to go, I can make the hard changes. I want to change my attitude. I will now want to listen to those who have been in recovery for months or years and listen to their hopeful attitudes and how they are felling better now that they are living one day at a time, and no longer fearful that their old nemesis, the sadness, will sneak up and change everything back to the way it was.

I can only change myself. I will always try and keep the focus on how I need to change, not how others around me need to change. (For more accounts of how persons changed their lives in   Depressed Anonymous (Personal stories) , third edition, 2011. DAP. )_

MEDITATION

God, we are always heartened and healed by the group. Please guide us and let us be  led to that healing community of those persons who are struggling to find the security that you promise to those who do your will.” “Fear not, for I am always with you.”

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Lately, I have been reflecting on how each of us is embedded in a unique culture which not only influences our decision making but also personal mores, attitudes about life, ourselves and each other. In the near future I will spend some time here at this BLOG  and share how culture has a dramatic influence  on how we live out our lives  My thoughts will go in the direction of trying to answer the question: Does our culture, way of life, that is our society, promote  a depressive lifestyle, thinking and behavior. I hope that you will follow me here as we  together reflect on this critical question. Join me as we continue this clarification of thought process here at our Depressed Anonymous website.

Please check out Depressed Anonymous Publications @ Visit the store

Belief, DA Literature, Fellowship, Higher Thoughts for Down Days, Victim Thinking

VICTIM? NO! SURVIVOR? YES!

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AFFIRMATION

I want to believe that my God, as I understand Him, will continually make a path for me through life.  I want today to listen to its leading.

“Our patterns are more successful than the fortune – telling arts since we expect our patterns to prove true, and expecting this, we usually find that they do. Edmund Carpenter once wrote, ‘We say, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it, ‘  but the phrase should be, ‘If I hadn’t believed it with all my heart, I wouldn’t have seen it.”

REFLECTION

I usually expected bad things to happen to me because bad things usually did happen to me, as Dorothy Rowe points out in her six immutable beliefs that make up the prison of our depression. I used to believe that God punished me for all the bad things I did in my life and for my being the bad person that I believe that I am. But now, I am changing my belief  about my depression and that I am only  a passive victim.

It’s as if they believe that my depression is like a rotted tooth, a thing, that can be extracted  I am slowly believing that it is important what I believe about myself and how I have a responsibility to extract myself from my own lifestyle of sadness. I do know this, that if I continue to think the way I have over the last couple of years, I will stay stuck in the deep pit of depression.

I am now believing with all my heart that I will get better with the help of my own resources and through the help of others and the Twelve Step programs.

MEDITATION

God, you can make all things new but you never infringe your  will upon any of us. But the more  peace  that we receive from turning our will over to yours, the more I can predict that my future will be more according to your design.

SOURCE: Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for 12 step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. (1993, 1999).  Louisville, Ky 40217.(pgs. 35-36). February 16.

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Belief, Courage, Higher Power, Isolation, Love, Spiritual Heroes, Spirituality, The 12 Steps

CONFESSIONS OF A SOCIOLOGIST: THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SPIRITUALITY AND DEPRESSION

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David Karp, in his work Speaking of sadness: Depression, Disconnection, and the Meanings of Illness (1996)  confesses that in the middle of interviewing persons for this work  states, “I was initially puzzled by the number of respondents who spontaneously  spoke about the role of spirituality in their lives.  During the early stages of the data collection, however spirituality meant no more  or less to me than any of the large number of issues that were coming out of the interviews. At a certain point, though, enough people spoke about spirituality that I began routinely to ask everyone about it. Certainly there were many who had little to say, and some who claimed no interest in spirituality, but the question often elicited an outpouring of talk.  After 25 or so interviews, it seemed that my anticipated chapter on coping and adapting would have to pay at least some attention to the role of spirituality.” (p.190).

Karp was deeply impressed by what he calls the “courage and grace”  how some of his interviewees faced their own pain of depression. He says  he “left many interviews with a sense that spiritually engaged individuals were in touch with something important. ”  He concludes by saying  “These people possessed or knew something that I didn’t.” (pp. 190 -191).

I think most of you who are reading my posts know that I too am an advocate  of the  power of  spirituality in the recovery process for persons depressed. In the American culture and most probably in most Western cultures, where one’s lack of meaningful work and diminishing intimate relationships, or “double trouble” as a colleague of Karp,  Charles Derber points out, promotes a community of strangers, alone, isolated and disconnected.  He describes depression as the disease of disconnection.  Freud when asked what makes for human happiness he replied ” arbeiten  und  leben”. (work and love).

All the above is put before you, the reader, to continue to present to you how important  my own recovery from depression  continues  to this day because of my own spirituality dependent on my Higher Power, or the God of my understanding. In BELIEVING IS SEEING:15 WAYS TO LEAVE THE PRISON OF DEPRESSION (2014) I share how I believe that I am not alone, as I have other fellow travelers who will lead me around the ditches and the potholes of that old depressive life style that once ruled my thoughts and actions. Now I am on a personal mission of growth and recovery.” (p.13).

I still have my potholes, ditches and rough seas to maneuver around,. Thanks to a Power greater than myself— I pray and continue rowing to shore, and this Power as I understand it, has been getting me to that safe harbor of serenity and safety.

Fear, Fellowship, Higher Thoughts for Down Days, Mindfulness, The 12 Steps

I WILL CLIMB EVERY HILL AND CROSS EVERY VALLEY…

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I WILL CLIMB EVERY HILL AND CROSS EVERY VALLEY SO THAT  I MAY GET BETTER AND SHARE THE STORY OF MY RECOVERY WITH NEW MEMBERS AT MY NEXT REGULAR MEETING.

AFFIRMATION

“Admitting our helplessness, we can abandon our desperate  attempts  to control everybody and everything, and simply ‘go with the flow,’ taking life as it comes. Many people, emerging from depression or from a major trauma, do this when they decide to take ‘one day at a time.'”

REFLECTION

This is the hard part, trying to stay out of the past and avoid living in the future. It’s wise to be as aware  as I can of what is going on  inside of me and around me. One man who is a regular at our group meeting said that the trouble with those who were depressed, including himself, was that he always felt sorry for himself.  He was overwhelmed that his self-pity would never help him feel better. He’s right. It won’t!

I need to study the steps, especially Step Eleven in which it states that I should make conscious contact with God as I understand God, praying only to do His will for me. This is the letting go that will help me to relax and help me try and live one day at a time.

MEDITATION

Jesus said don’t worry about tomorrow because there are enough  worries to concern ourselves with  today.  He was right. Just keep praying that God, as we know Him, will give us all we need when we need it, and how we need it. It will all come when it is supposed to.

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SOURCE: Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for 12 step fellowship groups. Depressed  Anonymous Publications, Louisville, Ky 40217.

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Belief, Believing Is Seeing, Blame, Depressed Anonymous, Focus, Purpose, The 12 Steps

BELIEVING IS SEEING

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  BELIEVING IS SEEING

AFFIRMATION

I will use a notebook or my Depressed Workbook Home Study program  to chart my course, list how each day goes, so that I can repeat the feelings or thoughts that have allowed me to feel I am becoming responsible for my activities.

“”…there is one great advantage about seeing yourself as helpless and in the power of others.  You don’t have to be responsible for yourself.  Other people make all the decisions and when things turn out badly, you can blame other people. And things always turn out badly. You know this.  That’s why you always expect the worse.”  (3)

REFLECTION/ CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

Truly, I know  this is where the great serenity lies, being responsible for myself.  If all I did was sit around and say poor me, and woe is me, I am not only making life tough on myself but I am making life miserable for those around  me. This is why I, as a writer and therapist, and one who has been depressed, knows that it is only when I get moving, even though I felt like death that I began to get better.   No one will make me feel better. (See: I’ll do it when I feel better) I will now make myself feel better. Make up your mind to do what needs to be done…TODAY!  I want to enjoy this world. I am tired of the pain of feeling worthless. I don’t want to blame anyone for my problems because no one is making me live in the problem. I will live in the  solution from now on.  The solution for me is working the Twelve Step program.

Blame helps me to never have to look inside myself and ask myself how much of my present state of depression is due to the way I have learned to think about myself and my life? I am not in the blame game and so I am now willing to face the enemy and start the changing process.

MEDITATION

Faith can move mountains. (See: Believing is seeing: 15 ways to leave the prison of depression)  Ask and you shall receive. Knock and the door shall be opened for you. I believe this. What  do you believe?

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SOURCE: Higher thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for Twelve step fellowship groups.

All Or Nothing Thinking, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Fellowship, The 12 Steps

ALL OR NOTHING

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ALL OR NOTHING

“During acute depression, avoid trying to set your whole life in order all at once.  If you take on assignments so heavy that you are sure to fail in them at the moment, then you  are allowing yourself to be tricked by your unconscious. Thus you will continue to make sure of your failure, and when it comes you will have  another alibi for still more retreat into depression.

“in short, the ‘:all or nothing’ attitude is a most destructive one. It is best to begin with whatever the irreducible minimums of activity are. Then work for an enlargement of these –day by day. Don’t be disconcerted by setbacks – just start over.”  Bill W., As Bill Sees it. (p.308)

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I know  about this “all or nothing ” experience. It was really made manifest in my daily study of the Twelve Steps and writing down my thoughts in my journal. Now I use the HOME STUDY PROGRAM, which lets me go at my own speed and examine my own life in relationship to the Steps as spelled out in the Depressed Anonymous Manual and  with questions asked in the Depressed Anonymous Workbook. Together,  these really have helped me focus on one piece of the puzzle at a time. When I first entered the Twelve Step fellowship I wanted to devour everything there was to know about addictions in one big gulp.  Gradually I learned that if I took my time, read the literature and continued to use Workbook and Manual one day at a time, that my life began to have that promised serenity and a hope that continues to this day.

“I find the insights of Bill W., to be at the cutting edge of whether or not a person depressed gets better or just simply gets., that is,  gets more isolated and disconnected from life.  Many hurting folks come to  Depressed Anonymous with the mistaken belief that they are coming to a class; while there, someone will teach them about how to quickly get out of their depression. They want a quick fix and then get right back to living the way they used to – never realizing that they have to do some work on themselves if they indeed want to stay free of depression…” DEPRESSED ONCE – NOT TWICE.

Belief, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Ego Deflation, Egoism, The 12 Steps

WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE, ANYWAY?

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“The faith of my Sunday school days was gone, and the  “god of my understanding” was far off.  (But not so far as it turned out).  It stretched me to even imagine ” a power, a strength, and I became unwilling to take this route. I wasn’t ready to take on God yet.

However, God was ready to take me on, for in my ignorance I’d done about all AA  (We could add DA here. Editor) asks — I had become willing. And this is how he did it. In some casual reading about seeds, this statement caught my attention: ” Science can construct a seed identical to a natural seed in every detail but one –science’s seed will not germinate.”  The words seemed to leap from the page. They demanded answers. What is the missing ingredient in the man made seeds?  Is it some dimension I don’t know about?  Is it in everything? Even people?  And then the big question. Who is in charge here, anyway?

Backed into a corner finally, by a logic greater than my ego, I conceded. Too many miracles, too much confidence, and too much evidence of a power greater than myself all around me left me defenseless. and in awe. I surrendered. And the power wasted no time in reinforcing my belief with these words from the Big Book: “We found that as soon we were able to lay aside prejudice and  express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God…

He is always there if I but look, feel and want him to be; my conscious contact is dependent upon my being willing.

My personal  thought about this passage is that it took a complete deflation of my ego before I said “I give up.” My life was in ruins and I had nowhere to go. No one had an answer–not even my church fellowship. (That came back in spades later). But who was able to help–it was that Twelve Step group  who said that they believed in this Power  that was truly greater than the booze, depression, gambling–insert your own addiction here–and you know what, they were right. That was more than 30 years ago.  The seed that was planted by these Steps has now produced in my life that is lived one day at a time.

SOURCE: The Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Depressed Anonymous Publications. (Question 11.11 in STEP ELEVEN SECTION. Louisville, KY  40217.

Fellowship, Hope, Victim Thinking

I BEGAN TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR HOW I FEEL, THINK AND BEHAVE. I AM NOT A VICTIM!

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” You  might now be feeling better for the first time in your life as you continue to make a conscious effort to take responsibility for your sadness.”

I began to take responsibility for how I feel, think and behave.

REFLECTION

One of the hopeful sights to see at a Twelve Step meeting is that the people who work their program and who are serious about leaving their depression start to not only look more content with themselves, their world and their future, but they also seem to be enjoying life once again.

Teresa told me that her Doctor never once said she was depressed after her physical exam and it wasn’t until she got involved in therapy with me did she learn that what she had  been feeling for months before was her depression, She was relieved to know that she wasn’t losing her mind but only that she was experiencing the excruciating sadness that we all create when  we get depressed.

She will feel better when she learns that it’s her life and the way she chooses to interpret what happens to her is also her choice. Misery is an option and if she wants  to go for that she may, but if she wants to live with  some unpredictability in  life, then she needs to get ready for some bumps in the road  – but also she needs to be prepared to smile, laugh and know that her life can be filled with hope.

 MEDITATION

God please give us the wisdom to know that you want us to enjoy this life while we are here. We want to to enjoy it, so let us seek to want to be in your will. We can make it.

Choice, Higher Thoughts for Down Days, Hope, Isolation

RIGHT NOW, I FEEL A GLIMMER OF HOPE…

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Right now, I feel a glimmer of hope.  I will make this glimmer grow brighter by trusting in my ability to expand my activities today and talk to a friend about the small steps I am taking to feel better today.

“Those of us who cope with life have  put up some barriers, have made some disconnections by maintaining many connections. Those people who become depressed have disconnected themselves completely, and the barriers they  have built are the walls of the prison of depression.”

Depression continues for as long  as I stay disconnected from those around  me. I don’t want to be connected – I might have to change the way I think, feel and act.  This would turn  my comfortable world upside down and then where would I be. I’d be like the sailor on a cloudy night-nary a star by which to chart my course.  Being in contact and connected with others means that I am ready to risk getting someone else a look inside my prison. It means that my new connections will change me to face my old beliefs about myself and my world.  Today, I have the opportunity to choose to trust or to retreat back into my hole of hopelessness. What’s it  ‘gonna’   be?

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EXCERPTS:  HIGHER THOUGHTS FOR DOWN DAYS.